Michael Weiss (engineer)
Michael L. Weiss is an American engineer known for repairing and servicing satellites in space, especially the Hubble Space Telescope. He was the deputy program director for the Hubble program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Weiss earned a Bachelor and a Master of Science in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 1978 and 1983.
He led systems engineering for Solar Maximum Mission, Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, and the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer, and he directed the first shuttle-based satellite repair, the Solar Maximum Repair Mission, in 1984.
Weiss worked on all five Hubble servicing missions, directing systems development for Servicing Mission 1 and 2 and serving as deputy program director through Servicing Mission 4.
He also led the Mishap Investigation Board into a balloon launch failure in Australia that carried a gamma-ray telescope to UC Berkeley.
An experienced diver, Weiss has trained for space servicing in NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory for over 200 hours. He is also an open-water diver and underwater photographer. He has appeared on NOVA, the Discovery Channel, NPR, and the BBC to talk about Hubble and its servicing missions.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 07:12 (CET).